1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a front body structure for a vehicle such as an automobile.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-138963 (paragraphs [0004], [0030] and FIG. 2) discloses a pedestrian protective front body for a vehicle including a front spoiler separately disposed from the front end of the nose of the vehicle body, extending in the traverse direction of the vehicle body and buffering an impact greater than a predetermined energy by deforming its shape, thereby to provide improved pedestrian protective performance.
More specifically, the pedestrian protective front body disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-138963 is configured in such a manner that a stiffener composed of a core beam member extending in the traverse direction of the vehicle body and having a weak point at the center of the stiffener is disposed in the spoiler, and the stiffener is suspended between front side frames via supporting members. With this configuration, the shape of the weak part of the stiffener is allowed to be changed to buffer an impact, which provides improved pedestrian protection performance.
However, the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-138963 incurs a risk that the stiffener suspended between the front side frames is bent due to a lateral impact applied to the front side frames which rotatably support front wheels when a running vehicle, for example, turns along a curve.
In order to prevent the stiffener from being bent, the stiffener may be formed thick by making the outer diameter of the stiffener greater to improve its stiffness, but this causes another problem that the weight of a vehicle increases as the stiffness is improved. This further causes yet another problem that the equivalent inertia weight of a vehicle also increases as the weight of the front body of the vehicle is increased, resulting in instability of the vehicle. The Japanese Industrial Standards specifies that the equivalent inertia weight of a vehicle is weight of 1.08 times of the vehicle weight including the engine.